


The One Where Natasha is Clint's Weakness

by JinxQuickfoot



Series: Weaknesses [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, BAMF Clint Barton, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Hurt, Kidnapping, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Pre-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Protective Clint Barton, Protective Natasha Romanov, Ronin Clint Barton, Yakuza
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23409574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinxQuickfoot/pseuds/JinxQuickfoot
Summary: But nothing scares or angers Clint more than the photos of Natasha, which are tucked into every single set of photos they send him. The packages of photos come unmarked, unsigned. It doesn’t matter. Clint knows who they’re from.----------------------------------------------------------------------------Set post-Infinity War where Clint Barton has taken up the Ronin mantle. When Clint sets his sights on taking out the Yakusa, they start sending him photos. Photos of his friends. Of their families. And of Natasha.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Avengers Team, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov & Avengers Team
Series: Weaknesses [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672462
Comments: 15
Kudos: 82
Collections: Weaknesses





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Day 11 of the "Weaknesses" writing challenge
> 
> [Come say hi on Tumblr - I take requests!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/jinxquickfoot)

They send the photos of Steve first.

Steve at a support group, still trying to help, still believing that he could make the world better, even _this_ world. Steve comforting a crying widow, a sobbing mother, a distraught son. Steve slumped out the back of the building, his head in his hands, with no one to wipe away his tears in return.

They send the photos of Bruce next.

Bruce in his lab, surrounded by holo-screens, Bruce running tests on himself, Bruce with green skin, electrodes covering his body, his face contorted in pain.

Thor comes the day after, amid the building of New Asgard, and Clint barely recognises his old friend for his unbrushed hair and the long beard, the tired eyes and sagging stomach. There’s a beer in Thor’s hand more times than not, a woman with dark hair trying to talk to him, Thor pushing her away.

They send Tony last, and Clint knows that’s on purpose, that this one will hurt most. Tony and Pepper in a beautiful lake house. Tony bouncing a young girl with his eyes and Pepper’s nose on his knee.Pepper insisting on yet another photo of Morgan perched on Uncle Rhodey’s lap. Tony kissing his beautiful wife, their child in their arms.

Fifty-fifty chance. Just a roll of the dice.

They start sending them in random order after that. One day it’s Steve, another Tony, then back to Bruce, sometimes Thor. One day the photos are replaced with a newspaper clipping of a young girl standing next to a memorial marker, because there hadn’t been enough room for all the tombstones, and they’d had no bodies to bury anyway. Clint frowns at the clipping until he reads the caption - “CASSIE LANG (13) is depicted next to her father’s memorial marker” - and he slams his first into the rotting wall because he is going to kill them, every last one of them, every single one of them out there who didn’t deserve to survive.

They send pictures of Wanda one day, just to be cruel.

But nothing scares or angers Clint more than the photos of Natasha, which are tucked into every single set of photos they send him.

Natasha at her desk in the compound. Natasha at her favourite coffee shop. Natasha training in the gym, pushing herself to exhaustion, slamming her fists into punching bags until her knuckles bleed. Natasha asleep - a lot of those - although none of them in her bed. It seems his old friend is currently grabbing a few minutes wherever she can - in her office, on the kitchen couch, in the cockpit of a quinjet parked in the air hanger.

The packages of photos come unmarked, unsigned. It doesn’t matter. Clint knows who they’re from.

He’s doesn’t leave his apartment - if you could call it that. He’s squatting in an abandoned floor of an old warehouse in downtown Tokyo. There are plenty of spare apartments around with not enough living occupants to fill them, but Clint can’t bring himself to use any of those. 

So he makes do. He doesn’t need much anyway. Just a tap and a locked door and walls on which to pin his notes on the Yakuza.

The walls are covered.

He knows where they are. He’s already taken out a large faction of theirs in Kyoto before moving to Japan’s capital. That’s when the photos started arriving. They know it was him. He doesn’t care.

A fortnight passes. Clint starts putting the photos they send him up on the last free bit of wall. He doesn’t know why (yes he does). He’s examining them for clues (he misses his friends).

He weighs up options. Goes out at night. Takes out muggers, looters, one would-be rapist. 

Just a roll of the dice.

It wasn’t fair. That these kinds of people get to live while-

Doesn’t matter. He’s evening out the odds. He’s making it right.

Even as he repeats the mantra, the pictures of his former teammates come to mind. Tony finding happiness. Thor rebuilding his people from the ground up. Bruce continuing to explore and invent and create. Steve still trying to help, to reach out to others just like him, trying to get them to move forward.

And Natasha, still leading the fight, still seeing enough left in the world to make it worth saving.

He could…

He doesn’t know what he could do.

On the eighteenth day, the worst envelope comes.

Natasha’s office. Natasha’s favourite coffee shop. Natasha’s well-worn punching bag. The kitchenette, the hangar, the parking garage.

All empty. Natasha’s not in any of them.

Clint’s already moving, taking down all his notes about the Yakuza, setting a small fire and burning them. They’re ingrained in his mind anyway.

It’s harder to burn the photos, but he knows he can’t leave them. He won’t be back, and he’s not up for having anyone else see his friends so vulnerable, giving away their locations so easily. Still, it was nice to have their faces around again, even for a short while.

He eyes fall on the newspaper clipping of Cassie, the photo of Morgan smiling while Tony tries to detach her fist from his hair. 

He stuffs a selection of the photos into his jacket, and burns the rest.

After checking that he’s left no trace of himself behind, he slings his arrows over one shoulder, and Ronin ventures forth into the rain-slicked Tokyo streets.

***

He knows where they’ll be. He’d been scoping it out for weeks, had been forming a plan of attack when the photographs started arriving.

It’s an old building that could once have been a temple with its delicate architecture and ancient stones, ruined by the neon lights curving up its side. Ronin enters from a roof across the street - a single arrow through the highest window and then he zip-lines in, taking out the two Yakuza in the top floor before they even have time to register he’s there, let alone sound an alarm.

Then its down the stairs, coming into contact with another and _snap_ they’re down, their neck at a wrong angle before two more follow. The fourth one is faster, dodging Ronin’s grip, engaging him. The battle is four moves in three seconds and Ronin comes out on top, moving down and down, into the heart of the building. If they’re keeping her anywhere, it’s there.

He finds what must be the room, ornately carved doors and two guards with machine guns outside who each find an arrow in their necks. They haven’t even hit the ground before Ronin is snatching up one of those machine guns and taking the ammunition from the other. He kicks open the doors and then he’s face-to-face with a dozen of them, and at the centre is the man he’s been searching for, the man he only knows as Iko, the leader of this faction and Ronin doesn’t even fucking care because he only has eyes for the red-headed woman at Iko’s feet.

The ends of her hair are still blonde, and she’s wearing a new uniform, something state-of-the-art in her classic black that has not prevented enough of the damage the Yakuza have done to her. She’s kneeling, not even bound, doesn’t even look up as Ronin enters, and that scares him more than anything because he can’t imagine what they would have had to do to Natasha Romanoff to have her kneel like that and not fight back.

Iko steps forward, a possessive hand reaching for Nat. “Clint Barton-”

It’s as far as he gets because Ronin isn’t here to listen to villainous monologues, all he knows is that hand _is not going to touch her._

So he raises the machine gun and fires.

It’s quick but not painless, Ronin himself taking damage, but nothing lethal, nothing that even slows him down, and he drops the gun as he sees Iko grabbing Natasha and hauling her front of himself as a shield, and he’s reaching for his bow instead, the weapon he's carried so many times into battle at Natasha's side.

Hawkeye’s arrow hits his mark. It always does.


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha is aware of pain and then numbness, and a small part of her brain must still be fighting, because it’s telling her the numbness is worse. 

There are voices then she’s being moved. Even though she’s aware of the restraints around her wrists and ankles finally being removed, she can’t control her own body, can do nothing but let herself be dragged into a dark room, where they seem to be waiting, and they seem to wait forever. 

Then noise. So much of it, and Natasha would block her ears if she could only move her arms, but it’s like her body is no longer a part of her. She doesn’t fight when she feels arms lift her up, when she feels the knife at her throat vanish as soon as it had appeared.

Then hands, rough and coarse but still (blissfully) familiar are lifting her up, and her eyes are so heavy but she forces them to stay open, to catch a glimpse of his face, because even though she knows it’s him, she just wants to see. Just for a moment.

“Clint?”

She’s not sure if she’s managed to say it out loud or not because she falls back into the numbness and her eyes close again.

When she opens them, she finds she can move, although her limbs are heavy, as though they’re made of lead, and there are new arms around her now, strong, familiar arms and a voice she knows and trusts ( _Steve,_ her mind supplies although she forgets it as soon as she remembers), carrying her out of what she thinks is her quinjet and into the Avengers compound (how did she get back to the compound?)

When Natasha fully awakes, she can only keep her eyes open for an hour, but it’s enough time for Steve to explain to her how she’d vanished two nights ago, taken in one of their own quinjets, only to have that same quinjet touch back down that morning, the autopilot coordinates set for home. Natasha nods and manages something about Yakuza and drugs and Clint (was it Clint? Or did she imagine that part) and then something else about wanting to sleep more.

It’s a week before she’s feeling herself again, and that’s more than enough time for her to discover the packet of photos tucked into her uniform.

She starts with Steve, visiting the rec centres where he holds his support meetings, his apartment, his rooms at the compound, being a thorough as she can, She even stays for one of the meetings, although when it comes to her turn to speak she shrugs and says she’d rather listen, which is true, but also because if she talks she’s going to cry, and then she’s scared she won’t stop, not ever. So she stays quiet and drinks the crappy coffee and afterwards she follows Steve out to the back of the building and sits with him and lets him cry into her shoulder about all the ones he’s never talked about himself, of Sam and Wanda and Vision and Scott and most of all Bucky, Bucky he had only just gotten back, who had finally found some semblance of peace, only be ripped from Steve’s life yet again.

She visits Bruce next, and although she is unprepared for the sight of Hulk in glasses and a sweater, she is even more surprised to see his wide smile, gathering her for a (very gentle) hug. And they talk, really talk, for the first time since before Ultron, and Natasha’s heart fills with warmth at the reignited friendship that is at last untainted with what-ifs and what-could-have-beens and words they can’t take back (I adore you) and she does, adore him, her long-time friend she has missed more than she knew.

Thor is hard. He too greets her with a smile, but this one is teary and broken and filled with lost hope, from the shell of the shining optimist she had grown to love so much. So she has him show her around New Asgard, and tells him it’s beautiful, because it is, and she meets Valkyrie, and she’s every bit as funny and sharp and wonderful as Bruce had described her, and Natasha leaves with the small comfort that Thor has at least one friend to keep him from tipping off the edge of the abyss after losing so (too) much. She gives him a kiss on the cheek as she leaves, and tells him to consider shaving.

She finally gets to meet Cassie Lang, who is over the moon at getting to meet (the) Black Widow, and while it hurts Natasha to talk about Scott, she revels in finally getting to tell the young girl about her father’s heroics, at seeing the light in her eyes when hearing her father’s name and Captain America’s in the same sentence, at Cassie’s quiet enthusiasm as she shows Natasha the collection of ugly dolls Scott made for his daughter over the years, and when Natasha finally leaves she does cry, cries for this girl who is growing up with her father, and for the father she loves so much continuing on without his children.

And if her heart is broken then, it is mended (just a little) when she goes and sees Tony. Tony, with as much grey as brown in his hair, bouncing Morgan on his lap as Natasha approaches the lake house. Rhodey immediately comes to greet her, wrapping her in a hug and, after a moment of awkwardness and hesitation, Tony does the same, and Natasha finds herself pulling her friend in close and finding words (I’m so happy for you) and Tony turns so she won’t see the tears or the guilt in his eyes, and mumbles something about staying for dinner, and that he hopes she likes organic food ( _really_ organic food) and she says of course and can she hold Morgan? So Tony passes his daughter to her and Morgan squeals and hugs her as well, and Natasha sees a look on Tony’s face that she’s only seen one other time, when he told her about an intern who had come to work for him before the snap; an intern’s whose picture is framed above the lake house’s kitchen sink.

Everywhere she goes, Natasha looks. For cameras, for bugs, for any signs the Yakuza are still watching her friends. What she finds instead are the signs of where they once were, now carefully and expertly removed, as though someone is one step ahead of her, making sure their family was safe.

Morgan asks for Natasha (Aunty Nat) to tuck her into bed that night, and when she does she tells Natasha that she met one of Daddy’s friends in the woods, that she had surprised him and he had smiled and told her that very few people were able to do that (as Natasha knows all too well). Morgan had asked what he was doing there and the man said that he was there to make sure she and Mommy and Daddy and Uncle Rhodey were safe, and that she wasn’t supposed to tell any of them that she had seen him, but he hadn’t said not to tell Aunty Nat. Natasha smiles and says he’s Natasha’s friend too, although she doesn’t get to see him very much anymore and Morgan asks if that makes her sad and Natasha says yes and Morgan says she has a special way of making the sadness go away. Natasha asks what that is and Morgan says she has to whisper it so Natasha leans in close and Morgan gives her a big kiss on the cheek (Mommy says it always worked on Daddy) and then tells Natasha that her cheek tastes salty.

Natasha goes home. She works in her office. She goes to her favourite coffee place. She works out in the gym, although now she is more careful not to leave quite as much blood on the punching bags.

She does what she can. They’re all doing what they can. 

It’s all we can do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is what happens when you listen to the Endgame soundtrack while you write.

**Author's Note:**

> So hey, I have this film and screenwriting podcast? It's called "Kill the Cat" and once a month my co-host and I and break down one of our favourite movies or tv shows and look at why they work, including Harry Potter, The Princess Bride, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and, of course, the MCU.
> 
> You can check it out on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ypaen3yM5Q&t=1s&ab_channel=KilltheCatPodcast), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/5hCprc9UCBZP4srFrBXKT1?si=ZOqdhMlVQvqV2fG5PxuvOA), or anywhere you listen to podcasts. 
> 
> And hey. You're doing great.


End file.
